Jindal's Education Reforms: 'not about what works, but about his political ambitions'

BESE District 3 representative Lottie Beebe was one of the new members of the board who got steam rolled by the new majority on that board who voted to unilaterally amend the Louisiana Constitution by clearing the way for Minimum Foundation Formula (MFF) funds to be diverted to private schools. Beebe, unlike the new majority of the board, was not elected with money from a handful of wealthy individuals and Governor Jindal.

Shocked by the refusal of the board's bought and paid for majority to even allow a formal discussion of the momentous decision, Beebe decided to convene an education issues forum in Cecilia to inform the public about what is taking place.

On Sunday, March 4, more than 200 people gave up their afternoon on a beautiful day to hear a panel of speakers describe the current state of public education in Louisiana (including what is taking place in the Recovery School District), the politics driving the proposed changes, and why the changes will worsen, not improve, public education in Louisiana.

The speakers were: Beebe; Graig Luscombe, Executive Director of the Louisiana Retired Teachers Association; Bonnie Thibodeaux, principal of Parks Primary School in St. Martin Parish; Al Blanchard, a supervisor in St. Martin Parish; Karran Harper Royal, mother of students in the Recovery School District and a founder of the national public education advocacy program Parents Across America; Bambi Polotzola of the Louisiana Developmental Disabilities Council; Mike Deshotel, a retired teacher, former head of the Louisiana Association of Educators and now an education blogger; Lee Meyers, a teacher, a member of the Assumption Parish School Board, and a vice president of the Louisiana School Board Association; and Bryan Alleman of the Acadia Parish public school system.

The presentations lasted three hours. There was a question and answer session afterwards, but I did not stay for it.

Beebe told her audience that she was summoned to a special meeting of the BESE board the prior week and that the radical restructuring of the MFF to include the vouchers was included then. She asked for more time to discuss it in the meeting but her request was denied by newly appointed Superintendent of Education John White. So, with very little discussion, the plan to use public tax dollars to fund private schools — which many of the new members had been required to pledge to endorse in order to win financial support from Jindal, contractor Lane Grigsby and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — was approved and sent to the Legislature.

The Legislature (if they choose to adhere to the Louisiana Constitution that a majority of BESE members felt free to ignore) must either approve or disapprove the BESE funding scheme; they cannot modify it.

Luscombe said that most retirement legislation this year will not apply to K-12 employees, but as part of Jindal's divide to conquer strategy, that will wait until next year. Luscombe said he believes that this year's bills targeting the state employee retirement system and state workers will be the model for changes in the teacher retirement system that Jindal will pursue next year.

Luscombe singled out six bills (three really, but with separate House and Senate versions) that constitute the thrust of the Jindal changes.

HB 56 and SB 52 — will require state employees to contribut an additional 3% to their retirement fund. That money, though, is not going to go to close the gap in the unfunded accrued liability of the state employee retirement fund. Instead, the money from those higher contributions will go to the state general fund. The increased retirement contributions will be treated as general tax revenue of the state.


HB 55 and SB 51 will change the retirement eligibility age. If a state employee is not not 55 by June 30 of this year, he/she will have to work until 67 in order to be eligible to get their full retirement benefit.

Luscombe said the administration is also switching all new state employees to a defined contribution retirement program. Under these plans, individuals control the investment of their retirement money and it is paid out to them in a lump sum upon their retirement. He said he inquired as to the average balance of defined contribution retirement accounts that the state has made available to employees since the 1990s. He said he was told that it was $270,000.

"So, you'll get that money when you retire," Luscombe said. "God help you if you live too long and spend that money."

HB 61 and SB 53 will move state employees to a cash balance retirement account.

Luscombe said the Louisiana Teacher Retirement System earned 26% on its investments in recent years. "That's the best rate of return in the country, yet it is under attack," Luscombe said.

Thibodeaux, the Principal at Parks Primary focused on personnel evaluation program. She said that Compass, as it is called, is nothing new, but labeled it "busy work for someone else's agenda."

She said the evaluation system has a 23%to53% margin of error in evaluations. "This lack of accuracy would not suffice in the business world, yet being applied to public school teachers and principals."

"Teacher observation is not new," Thibodeaux said. "Compass not new." She then rattled off the list of its predecessors. LaTip, LaTap, LaTAAP, now Compass.

She pointed out that the Compass system is supposed to start in August, but noted that "the observation tools not developed yet. Yet we will be required to use it to decide effectiveness versus ineffectiveness of all education professionals."

She said that the overall tool is 40-page document and that it takes seven hours to administer, evaluate and complete. "I can tell you within seven minutes if I've got an effective teacher in my classrooms," Thibodeaux said.

Compass, she predicted, will produce same end result as prior systems but will consume more time.

She said the true measure of teacher effectiveness would not be the annual LEAP tests, but a test at the beginning of the year followed by one at the end of the year. That, she said, would give you a direct meaningful measure of the effectiveness of teachers in the classroom.

Blanchard provided an over view of the performance of charter schools in Louisiana.

He produced a spreadsheet which contained performance ratings of 82 of the 92 charter schools in Louisiana, including those in the Recovery School District in New Orleans.

Blanchard said that state figures show that 79% of RSD district schools were graded D or F. He said that a lower percentage of RSD schools received A grades than did the rest of the state's public schools.

He said that overall, 64% of all charters get D and F. Which is far higher  than the percentage of all Louisiana public schools, 44% of which received D or F grades in the state's school rating system.

Those charters getting "A" grades have selective admission, Blanchard said.

Under the Jindal reform package, students in schools graded C or lower would be eligible for vouchers.

Blanchard cited a 2009 Stanford study on charters which echoed his own review of Louisiana charters. Specifically, of the 17% of charters rated having superior performance than public schools, most have selective admission. Standford found that 35% of charter schools performed worse than traditional public schools with the remainder performing equal to that of public schools. "If only that small percentage are better — and they have to rely on special rules to get those outcomes — why is our state rushing in that direction?" Blanchard asked.

Ms. Royal, who has two children enrolled as students in the Recovery School District says the so-called New Orleans miracle is really "smoke and mirrors." She referred attendees to a Times-Picayune article on Jindal agenda.

In her experience, Royal said that New Orleans charter charge a lot of money in fees for what most parents would consider basic features of public schools.

She said most charters have select enrollment because "even those who can test in can't afford to stay in the schools."

Performance of the schools is skewed by rules that allow charters to not allow students with grade point averages below 2.0 to return to the school the following year.

"In New Orleans, we now have six variations of public schools," Royal said. "You need a guide book just to figure out who is responsible for what school. The decisions made about the operation of these schools are not local decisions, we have to agree to let a private board govern the school."

"I have never defended status quo," Royal said, "But these reforms are not about public education. It's about politics and the erosion of the democratic process. Corporate America has launched attack on public education."

She said much of the Jindal education agenda can be traced to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has been working to undermine public education for decades.

"These reforms don't make any sense," Royal said. "They don't make sense because it's not about education. It's about politics and power. It's about implementing the ALEC agenda."

She said that Jindal, John White and their allies are hiding the fact that Recovery School District schools are being outperformed by traditional public schools in Louisiana by the very measure they use to condemn the performance of public education.

"The only way to fight this is that you must get involved now," Royal said. "These people don't intend for our kids to get a quality education, their intent is to defund public education."

In her abbreviated comments, Polotzolla (who has an autistic son) said that 91% of charters don't have students with multiple disabilities, while 59% don't have students with autism.

She said she wants to force charters to take students with disabilities. Charters currently ask parents to waive rights. Selective admission systems at charters create a segregated system where only least desirable students from an educational achievement standpoint will be left to be educated in traditional public schools.

Mike Deshotel said the school grading system guiding the state's evaluation process is unreliable and unfair. He pointed out that all alternative schools in the state are graded F even though those schools are providing students with work skills and the basics they will need to make a living in the world.

Deshotel said that the root cause of Louisiana's educational problems is poverty. No amount of reform that fails to take this into account will ever succeed.

Deshotel singled out two bills to watch HB 976 and SB 597.

"In my 45 years in public education, these are the worst bills I've ever seen," Deshotel said. "They are terrible and very dangerous legislation.

The bills will vastly expand the use of charter schools and vouchers with public education dollars.

Lee Meyer said the new MFF funding recently approved by BESE actually results in support reductions for 35 of the state's public school districts.

"They added in 8,000 voucher students to the MFF at expense of the other districts," Meyer said.

Alleman of Acadia Parish documented the failure of charter schools and the Recovery School District to improve education, but noted that they do succeed in diverting badly needed resources from public school districts that must serve every student.

Greenstein Officially Replaces Levine as Jindal's Healthcare Hack

Bruce Greenstein replaced Alan Levine as Bobby Jindal's Secretary of the Department of Health & Hospitals (DHH) in 2010, but it wasn't until the second week of 2012 that Greenstein succeeded Levine as Jindal's partisan hack on healthcare.

The official coming out event in Greenstein's transition from technocrat to political operative was Greenstein's full-out attack on the Louisiana Budget Project (LBP) for their having pointed out the obvious — namely, that there are a lot of jobs tied to the state's $7 billion Medicaid program.

In a statement to Gannett's Capitol Buruea, Greenstein went ballistic.

"It's a fallacy to say reductions in Medicaid rates impact the economy," Greenstein said. "The liberal Louisiana Budget Project is simply making the same tired case for raising taxes and maintaining the status quo that has gotten us 49th in health outcomes.

It's not clear what about the LBP report so upset Greenstein. After all, the LBP report only echoes claims being made by the Louisiana Hospital Association (LHA) for a number of years, dating back to the period before Greenstein's arrival at DHH.

In reports the LHA issued in 2009 and 2011 on the economic impact of hospitals and healthcare in Louisiana, the LHA quantified the number of hospital jobs tied to Medicaid spending by region and by member hospitals.

In 2009, when the Jindal/Levine regime was threatening cuts of $300 million or more due to budget deficits caused primarily by the repeal of portions of the Stelly Plan, the LHA detailed the importance of Medicaid to hospital and healthcare employment by region and by hospital in a report entitled "Hospitals: Economic Agents in the Louisiana Economy" (PDF).

Included in both reports is information on the size of the healthcare segment in Louisiana — more than 250,000 workers employed in more than 11,000 locations, with an annual aggregate payroll in excess of $8 billion.

The LHA 2009 report declares, "The payroll of the healthcare sector in Louisiana is larger than the payroll of any other industrial classification in the state."

The LHA's 2011 report, "Hospitals and the Louisiana Economy, 2011" (PDF), makes the Medicaid/jobs link explicit and detailed: "In Louisiana, approximately 19% of net revenues are Medicaid- related. Medicaid-related expenditures lead to the creation of 47,483 jobs with personal earnings of $1.8 billion." (Page 6 of the 44-page PDF).

The LBP declaring that there is a link between Medicaid spending and job creation, then, is not radical or liberal. It is just a restatement of established fact made so by the industry that has first-hand knowledge of the impact of that funding — the hospital industry.

Sure, the LHA has a lot of skins in the game but that didn't seem to be a concern when Jindal, the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association (LOGA) and their cronies were whipping up the anti-moratorium hysteria back in the summer of 2010.

Greenstein's claim that there is no connection between jobs and the flow of more than $7 billion through the state's economy in the form of Medicaid-paid healthcare delivery is ludicrous on its face. In effect, he's arguing that there is no connection between the revenue that hospitals, clinics and doctors have and the number of people they employ.

That's not a fallacy. That's a delusion.

A Call for True Believers

Qualifying for state and local Democratic party positions opens today across Louisiana and the future of the party is riding on who among us will step forward to lead the effort to build this party.

Build is right word because there has never really been a Democratic Party in Louisiana. There has been a Democratic banner under which candidates have run for office, but there has never been much of anything resembling an actual party organization. There have been factions and organizations built around personalities, but there has not been a party organization per sé.

That is one reason why the Louisiana Democratic Party is in shambles today. It has never been more than a device to aid in the election of the top Democrat on the ticket in any particular election year. This year, there was no Democrat at the top of a statewide ticket — in fact, there was not a statewide ticket. There were House and Senate caucuses that managed to stave off Republican efforts to win veto-proof majorities in the Legislature, but there was no party behind any of those efforts. The state party was a mailing permit and a checking account.

This is just what the party was in 2010, only this time there were no statewide Democratic candidates on the ballot that could in any way be considered to have been standards bearers of what passed for the party this year.

The qualifying that opens today provides the opening to begin to change that.

The 210 seats on the State Central Committee are open for qualifying as are the 986 or so seats on the various parish Democratic Executive Committees.

These are the bodies charged with building and maintaining the party at the state and local levels. Based on the results over the last four years, the leadership at the state level has been an abject failure. That failure has many sources, but none more glaring than the fact that the party has not appeared to stand for anything; or, if it did, it could not articulate it. As a result, the party sat in silence as what passed for public policy debates took place (can there really be a debate when only one side is talking?).

For the Democratic Party to have a future in this state, we need committed Democrats to turn out at Clerk of Courts offices across the state and qualify to fill those state and parish party committee seats.

But, not just any Democrats need apply.

What we need now are true believers. Democrats who burn with a passion for our party and its principles (see "What It Means To Be A Democrat" for some ideas). Democrats who stand ready to build a political organization that will provide the boots on the ground for Democratic candidates at the local, state and federal levels. Democrats who will fight the Republican assault on working families, minorities, teachers, public employees and others rather than seek an accommodation with those who are out to dismantle the essential public services that are the pathways to social mobility in this state and this country.

We need zealous Democrats to turn out to qualify for these positions, run strong Democratic campaigns for those seats, and then to engage in the work of party building after those elections are settled in March.


In the church that is the Democratic Party, the state central committee and the parish executive committees are akin to the clergy. They are the keepers of the flame of the party, where the passion must be the greatest and the belief must be the strongest. Why? Because the members of those respective committees swear oaths of office to promote and build the Democratic Party in this state.

As in religions, there are many levels of faith and conviction in our party as is the case in other political organizations.

But, when it comes to party committees, the job calls for the efforts to be focused on building the party and advancing its mission — not in finding middle ground with our opponents.

That is the work of elected officials who serve in the Legislature and other government positions.

We need to look no further than our opponents to catch a glimpse of what the role of party organizations are relative to elected officials — parties put the stake in the ground on issues; elected officials find the middle ground that is somewhere inside of where their party put that stake. One problem with our side is that our party has not put often enough and thus ceded the defining of the terms of the argument (the framing, if you will) to the other side. A result of that has been a radicalization of the other side because not enough of their crazy ideas have been challenged.

Democrats who care about the future of this state, who care about the future of the middle class here, about access to public education, about access to public services, about the ability of their children to find rewarding and challenging work in this state, need to commit to at least four years of work aimed at protecting those things that encompass what we have long stood for as a party and as a people.

We need you to turn out to qualify. We need you to commit your time, effort, and creativity to the task of building a political organization that can first stem, then turn the tide of greed-driven anti-social behavior that masquerades as public policy that spews like an uncapped gusher from our opponents in the party that now appears dominant in our state.

We did not get in this mess overnight. We won't get out of it overnight either. But, if we commit to work harder and smarter to reverse this we can, because as a great American once said, "the arc of moral universe is long but it bends towards justice."

If you're ready to fight for your party and your state, go qualify for a party position this week — and let's get to work!

What It Means To Be A Democrat

 (This is a speech delivered at the Lafayette Parish Democratic Executive Committee's fourth annual Lifetime Achievement Awards Banquet which was held on October 6, 2011. I got to deliver the speech by virtue of the fact I was the Democratic candidate for Lafayette City-Parish President.)

There are a lot of people thinking about this these days, particularly in our state and in our parish. Our state party was not able to field a single well-funded candidate for statewide office this year. The so-called smart money has abandoned us. Republicans have achieved the kind of dominance on the state level that some in this room have come to accept to here in Lafayette.

While conventional wisdom has it that these are bad times to be a Democrat, I believe we are exactly where we need to be in order to put our party in working order. There is no recognizable advantage to being a Democrat, so the opportunists have left us for greener pastures.

Clearly, for our party, the time has come to get back to basics. With most of the deadwood out of the way, we can now get down to the work of rebuilding our party.

In preparing for this speech, I went back to the very basics, starting with the root word “demos” in an effort to understand literally what it means to be a democrat.

The dictionary defines “demos” as being the common people of an ancient Greek state.

But, in the centuries since it originated, Demos has come to mean “the common people” in any political unit.

That form of government based on the notion of power flowing from the consent of the governed is called Democracy. Again, based on demos.

Democracy is defined as government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

The United States and Canada are democracies, although there are some in our own country who are working hard to restrict the right to participate in our elections. They are anti-democratic in both the little “D” and big “D” meanings of the word.

Democracy is also defined as a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges. That is, there is only one set of rules that we all agree to play by and that those rules produce a level playing field where your chances for success rest at least as much on what you know as  who you know.

There can be no privileged class in a democracy. We are all equal in terms of rights, duties and privileges.

So, demos is the common people. Democracy is rule by the common people, in a place having free elections, and where people have equality based on rights and privileges.

A democrat is an advocate of democracy.

That is, a Democrat is a person who believes in the political or social equality of all people.

We know this is an accurate definition, because for the past five decades in the South, our friends in the other party have used our commitment to equality as a wedge to turn some people away from our party. It worked so well on race, that our friends in the other party have tried to turn our support for equality for women, gays and others into wedges that they can use not just here but across the country.

In Louisiana, a state where we have 32% African American population and 37% total minority population, this tactic has worked to some extent, but has no long term chances for success here, so long as we remain true to our roots.

Our party, you might have read, no longer constitutes more than 50% of all registered voters in the state. We’ve known for a long time that not all people who are registered as Democrats actually support or event vote for Democrats.

The key to rebuilding our party is to embrace who we are and to run with it.

That is, to return to our great Democratic tradition of standing up for equality for all people. We stand for equality for women, for African Americans, for Asians, for Hispanics. We stand for equality of gays. We stand up for those who cannot defend themselves. The poor. The elderly. The infirm.

But also for the people who are the foundation upon which the wealth of this nation was built and continues to be produced. The people who build our roads; who clean our schools and offices; the people who wash those fancy cars; who mow those beautiful lawns; who work two or three jobs to ensure that the lives of their kids will be better than their own; those who teach our children; who work in the oil patch; those people who work countless hours trying to turn their small businesses into a bigger one.

Standing up for those people is the work that once defined us as a party. And that history shows the way up off the canvass and back into the fight.

Our friends in the other party like to defend the people they call “the job creators.” Fair enough — although they don't seem to be doing it very well now. But, let’s call the hard working people that we defend by their true name — They are the wealth creators. Nothing more and damned sure nothing less. These are our people — The people Democrats need to stand up for, to defend, to protect and to champion.

It is the work that we were called into being to do. It is the work upon which our future depends. If this is work that you are not willing to do, then you’re in the wrong party.

This is the work that makes calling ourselves Democrats meaningful. I'm Mike Stagg and this is what being a Democrat means to me — and I hope to you, as well.

Laying Claim to Louisiana

 

Progressives and Democrats from across Louisiana will gather in Alexandria on Saturday, August 27, to unite behind a strategy to plug grassroots activists into Democratic legislative campaigns this fall.

The event -- "Laying Claim to Louisiana"-- is the first part of a 500-day strategy to renew and revitalize the Louisiana Democratic Party and change the course of electoral politics in the state.

At the core of the strategy is the belief that all politics is local and that the key to renewing the state party is to harness the enthusiasm and passion of Democratic activists who have been motivated and engaged primarily by national campaigns and national issues.

The organizers of the event include officers and members of the Louisiana Democratic Party at the state and parish levels, traditional Democratic constituencies, and the in-state leaders of organizations active in national Democratic campaigns.

The goal is to build a new, working coalition that begins with electoral politics but extends beyond that into joint work on legislative and public policy issues.

The redistricting process completed earlier this year by the Legislature provides a new map from which the leadership of the Louisiana Democratic Party will be elected next year (qualifying is in early December). The state party leadership is going to change because the legislative map has changed.

We will plug in these activists into that new map to bring new vitality and energy into the state party through the election of members to the state party central committee, as well as to parish Democratic executive committees. The aim is to utilize the structure of the Democratic Party to channel the efforts and enthusiasm of the activist base into Louisiana state and local politics. We want to build a functioning political party that can provide resources, technical skills, and people to help Democratic candidates win election across the state.

It's a model that has been shown to work for Democratic parties in other states. Hell, it's worked for the Republican Party in Louisiana.

The election calendar provides the road map to guide this effort. The October 22 primary election and the November 18 runoff provide great opportunities for activists to connect with Democratic legislators and their allies to help those legislators stave off the attacks coming at them from Republicans led by David Vitter and Bobby Jindal.

Many of the activists who have been drawn to politics by national campaigns have not been as active in Louisiana politics. They have been turned off by Democrats who tended to run 'Republican-lite' campaigns. The exodus from the party of many of those candidates combined with the explicit targeting of Democrats by Vitter and his operatives, Democratic candidates must now follow the model of their Republican peers and understand that winning campaigns begin by securing their base — not in trying to themselves from it.

In Alexandria, there will be a list of targeted races presented where activists will be asked to help Democrats win election. That cooperation can serve as the springboard to greater cooperation between the activist wing of the party and legislators who, prior to this year, tended to operate independent campaigns with little or no regard for party.

The explicit external threat posed by Vitter's Louisiana Committee for a Republican Majority has produced a willingness to engage the party's activist base among Democratic legislators that did not heretofore exist.

That opportunity to cooperate shows the path forward for the entire party, not just the legislators.

The entire 500-day plan will be discussed in detail in Alexandria. Keynote speaker Melissa Harris-Perry will put our fight in the national context of other fights in places like Wisconsin and Ohio (the same anti-labor, anti-women, anti-democratic forces at work there, are working with Vitter and Jindal here).

The days of Democrats being able to hide their party label are over -- Vitter and the Republicans have seen to that. The path forward is to embrace to our party. We are the only multi-racial, pro-middle class, pro-education, pro-small business party in our state.

If we lay claim to our party, we can once again lay claim to our state.

See you in Alexandria on Saturday!

Letter to The Advocate: Gulf oil, gas value exaggerated

On February 23, The Advocate published my Letter to the Editor written in response to an article the paper published asking leaders of the anti-deep water drilling moratorium leaders to explain how tax collections were up and unemployment down in the state and in the markets where the moratorium was predicted to spread economic calamity.


Here's the text of the letter:

Advocate Capitol news bureau reporter Michelle Millhollon’s Feb. 15 article on reality not conforming to the hysteria generated by critics of the deep-water drilling moratorium served a valuable purpose beyond forcing those critics to confront the facts that their scare campaign against the moratorium was a hoax perpetrated against the people of this state.

The oil and gas industry, its lobbyists and public officials dependent on the industry for political funding fanned the anti-moratorium hysteria.

The signs of the hoax can be found in the lawsuit filed to overturn the moratorium a month after it was declared.

When 37 companies joined Hornbeck International in the suit against the moratorium, it looked like an industrywide revolt against the moratorium.

The reality was that those 37 companies were owned or controlled by two prominent Louisiana Republicans, Boysie Bollinger and Gary Chouest. Bollinger controlled 21 of the companies, Chouest 16.

Gov. Bobby Jindal directed state Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to file an amicus brief in the case in which Caldwell and his attorneys lied to Judge Martin Feldman.

On page four of that June 20 brief, in his “Statement of the Case” Caldwell declared: “Because of the moratorium, many thousands of Louisiana workers have lost their employment and many more are at risk of losing it in the near future.”

The only problem with the statement is that it was not true. The Louisiana Workforce Commission weekly reports on new unemployment claims never mentioned the moratorium at any time during the spring and summer of 2010 because thousands of jobs were not lost. In fact, new unemployment claims fell through most of the summer.

Lobbyists such as Don Briggs, of Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, can be forgiven; after all, they are paid to spin stories so as to put their clients in the best light. But those supposedly independent organizations that joined in fanning the fears last summer — Greater New Orleans Inc., the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, the LSU Center for Energy Studies — have had their credibility seriously damaged.

Public officials who were active players in this hoax — Gov. Bobby Jindal, then-interim Lt. Gov. Scott Angelle and Caldwell — must also be held accountable. Either they were knowing participants in this hoax or their industry patrons duped them.

All of this raises the possibility that we might have all been victims of a larger, longer-running hoax.

In light of the moratorium’s failure to cripple our economy, could it be that the economic importance of the offshore oil and gas industry to the state has been vastly overstated all these years?

Who can we now trust to give us an honest answer on this?

Mike Stagg
independent IT consultant
Lafayette

Redistricting and Louisiana Apartheid

The incredible news regarding Governor Bobby Jindal's appointments to the Board of Regents for Higher Education (BoR) is not just that all of the members he's appointed are white, but that he succeeded in making those appointments while paying no political cost for doing so.

The Legislative Black Caucus called out Jindal for his lily white, pay-to-play practices late last year, but the silence of white elected officials on this matter has been both appalling and — in a way — understandable.

Appalling because the notion that in a state with 37% minority population according to the just-released Census figure (32% Black and the other five percent comprised of Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans and others) that the Governor could not find even one person of color in all of Louisiana qualified to serve on the BoR is so outrageous as to demand a public rebuke from anyone with a sense of moral decency. The real issue might have been that Jindal could not find a person of color who could meet his other apparent requirement — that candidates for seats on the BoR be willing to contribute at least $5,000 to the his re-election campaign.

Nonetheless, the silence of the white politicians, particularly Democrats, on the bleaching of the BoR is appalling. The party has spoken out recently, but that comes only after the facts were clearly established in the law suit against Jindal's proposal to merge Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) and the University of New Orleans (UNO) by the legal team led by former state Senator Cleo Fields.

The reason the silence of white legislators is, in a way, understandable is because Louisiana politics is once again segregated. A review of the voter registration totals from every district in both houses of the Legislature reveal this fact. In the Senate, 24 of the 39 districts there are divided racially by splits that are 70/30 or worse. That is, in 61.5% of the Louisiana Senate districts the racial minorities are too small to effect the outcome of elections held there.

The situation is worse in the House. There, 71 of the 105 districts there have racial splits among voters that are 70/30 or worse. That is, in 67.62% of the House districts in Louisiana, the racial minorities in those districts are too small to affect the outcome of elections there.

These patterns and the resulting dynamic in the Legislature are corrosive and destructive to representative democracy. The proof is in the pudding of Jindal's all-white BoR appointments.

This is Louisiana Apartheid

Apartheid is defined as "A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups." The word is Dutch and came to infamy as a set of white supremacist policies in the country of South Africa that collapsed in the late 1980s.

The Louisiana Legislature, as a result of the redistricting that took place in 2001 is a bastion of apartheid. That is, whites represent whites and blacks represent blacks. As the racial voting splits indicate, legislators elected from the vast majority of the districts in the House and the Senate have little or no reason to take into account the interests of the minority voting block in their districts. It cuts both ways — whites are small racial minorities in many minority majority districts.

Those segregated districts have produced a racially polarized Legislature that lacks the essential ingredient necessary for compromise in a legislative body — some understanding of the needs and interests of the other legislators and his/her constituents.

The Legislature that resulted from the 2000 Census and redistricting process has more Black faces in each chamber, but those lawmakers are less able to produce results. That is not a reflection on the ability of those Black lawmakers. It is, instead, a product of the fact that most white lawmakers in each chamber have little understanding of the needs of Blacks because Blacks are politically insignificant in their districts. Blacks play no relevant political role in those districts, just as whites play no significant role in many heavy minority majority districts.

The problem has worsened since the 2003 election when term limits began to drain both bodies of experienced legislators and the long-term acquaintances (even friendships) that served as the basis for conducting the business of legislating, which frequently involves alliance building and compromise.

Jindal's BoR Frog Boil

Since Bobby Jindal was took office in January 2008 he has had nine opportunities to nominate people to serve on the BoR and all of those nominees he produced were white. Interestingly, there is no group shot of the BoR members on the organization's website. You have to click through on the name of each individual member in order to see who the members actually are.

Under the state Constitution, the Louisiana Senate is required to give its consent to the Governor's BoR appointees before they can officially take their seats. In that same section, the Constitution also states: "The board should be representative of the state's population by race and gender to ensure diversity."

The lawsuit seeking to block the study of the SUNO/UNO merger actually challenges the constitutionality of the the BoR as it has come to exist during Jindal's tenure because the all-white board violates that diversity provision. In court, former Senator Fields called other members of the Senate who voted on the original legislation that put the BoR constitutional amendment on the ballot to testify. The judge in the case ruled that "should" does not mean "shall" and effectively declared Jindal's racial bias to be legal.

This matter never should have gone to court because the Senate should not have allowed Jindal to appoint only whites to the BoR. The problem is that no white senator was willing to stand up to Jindal or stand with Black senators in calling out the Governor for racially biased nature of his appointments.

The reason for their silence has everything to do with the fact that most state senators represent districts that are essentially segregated. White senators in many instances do not have to pay attention to the interests of Blacks because there are not significant percentages of Black voters in their districts.

There are only 10 Black majority districts in the 39-seat Louisiana Senate. Two of those seats are actually held by whites (Francis Thompson from northeast Louisiana and David Heitmeier of the West Bank in the New Orleans area). By the time Jindal's whites-only pattern had become established, Black senators were the only ones willing to speak up and Jindal's denials of bias (despite the facts) seemed to assuage the other 31 members of the Senate.

Like boiling a frog, Jindal's transformation of the BoR from a demographically representative organization to a lily white one was done gradually and, by the time it was noticed, it was a done deal.

This Was No Accident

The bleaching of the BoR is the most blatant example of how Blacks have become marginalized in the Legislature. It is a process that has replicated itself in local governments in Louisiana, as well as legislatures across the South.

The kind of political segregation now evident in the Louisiana Legislature has spread across the South in recent years. It is, in fact, one part of the Republican 'Southern Strategy' of appealing to white voters.

In the 1980s, Republicans hit on a redistricting strategy that gave them the potential to use the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to their political advantage. The law was intended to ensure that Blacks were ensured fair opportunities to take part in governing in the nine Southern states where discriminatory racial practices tied to segregation had prevented them from doing so. Louisiana is one of the nine states covered by the Act.

Republicans came to realize that if they could encourage Blacks to maximize the number of Black majority districts and to encourage them to make them 'safe' districts, that the other result would be that predominantly white districts would become 'whiter' and more conservative. The strategy was first put into play across the South after the 1990 Census, and is covered in depth in the book "Race and Redistricting in the 1990's" by Bernard Grofman. "Maximizing black population districts would minimize black influence districts," Grofman wrote. "Minimizing black influence districts would maximize Republican electoral opportunities."

The "Black influence districts" mentioned by Grofman are those districts that, though having a majority of white voters, have large enough percentages of Black voters as to make them too important a block of voters for any candidate to ignore. The 2001 redistricting followed that formula to perfection, substantially reducing the number of Black influence districts and increasing the number of safe districts.

Former Representative Sherman Copelin told an audience at Southern University Law Center last week that he and Republican Representative Emile 'Peppi' Bruneau engineered the House plan that won approval in 2001. He also said that, in hindsight, it was a mistake. Copelin attributed the deal in part to the failure of white Democrats in the House at the time to work with Blacks on a common approach to redistricting.

Without question, the results have been disastrous for Blacks and for white Democrats. Both have been marginalized with white Democrats in either chamber of the Legislature are now an endangered species. It can all be traced back to the segregating of the districts that took place in 2001.

It Will Be Different This Time

Despite the fact that the Republican Party now holds majorities in both the House and the Senate and despite the fact that David Vitter's Louisiana Committee for a Republican Majority stands poised once again to pour millions into electing Republican majorities that can last through all three election cycles that will be covered by this redistricting process (2011, 2015, and 2019), things can and must be different this time around.

The process is much improved in this cycle over in previous redistricting years. The House and Senate Governmental Affairs committees charged with handling the redrawing of maps for each chamber conducted a series of public hearings across the state, allowing for citizen input in the process. The process has been more transparent, but there has also been more public input in that process than at any other time in Louisiana's history.

The Legislature has also called itself into special session to deal with redistricting (this was the first time the Legislature ever called itself into session for any reason). That session will begin on Sunday, March 20 and can run through Wednesday, April 13.

Prior to the start of that session, the two committees are to meet jointly again for still more public input in the process.

These hearings, like the hearings out in the state, are crucial because they create the public record on the process which will be a critical component once the Legislature approves its plans to redraw the district lines in each chamber, as well as the state's six congressional districts, the Public Service Commission, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and, possibly, the Louisiana Supreme Court.

The reason that public record is important is because Louisiana is covered by the Voting Rights Act. Under Section 5 of the Act, any changes in election laws in our state must receive preclearance from the U.S. Department of Justice before they take effect. There is a widespread expectation that there will to be challenges filed to whatever plan emerges from the Legislature, particularly for the congressional districts and each chamber of the Legislature.

And this is where the biggest change in the redistricting process will likely show up. For the first time since passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, a U.S. Department of Justice run by a Democratic administration will conduct the review of Louisiana's redistricting plans.

The significance of this cannot be overstated, not because the Justice Department under the Obama administration is political, but because the Department under the previous Republican administrations were so overtly political. Recall for a moment the way the Bush/Cheney administration politicized the hiring of U.S. Attorneys? Do you think it only went that far?

The Department of Justice will also accept comments from the public during the preclearance review process.

Recognizing the Problem

There is ample evidence that Black legislators recognize the extent to which they have been politically marginalized and the role the 2001 redistricting process contributed to that.

At a redistricting seminar held at Southern University Law Center on March 3, representatives from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund discussed the role that packing, stacking and other vote dilution strategies have played in undercutting the effectiveness of the Legislative Black Caucus in the Louisiana Legislature, as well as the impact that has had at other levels of government.

While the message was well-received, it remains to be seen if Black lawmakers will accept the less polarized districts and find willing partners in either chamber to work towards more heterodox districts in the redistricting session.

If willing majorities are not found (and it certainly does not seem likely, considering the newly minted Republican majorities), then populating the public record with those alternate plans becomes vital to challenges that would be considered in the preclearance review conducted by the Department of Justice.

The bottom line is that this year's redistricting offers a path out of the political segregation that has come to characterize our politics and taint our Legislature. While the maps drawn by this Legislature will be important, by no means will they constitute the final word on the shape of legislative districts in our state for the coming decade.

The process will continue beyond the highly partisan, racially distorted interests and parameters of the Legislature. We must recognize that fact and understand that the ultimate audience for those of us who want political and legislative processes that reflect the ethnic diversity of our state is not limited to Baton Rouge and is not limited to Louisiana.

Our audience includes the U.S. Department of Justice. Our goal should be to convince them to approve only redistricting plans that are consistent with the principles and objectives of the Voting Rights Act and not to merely rubber-stamping the partisan-tinged plans likely to come out of the Legislature.

This is how Louisiana can advance towards the change we both need and seek.

Bobby Jindal: cam head

The self-proclaimed 'Ethics Governor'™was laid bare as a fraud over the past week as the pay to play nature of his administration was revealed for all who cared to see.

Gold digger? Yes! Gold standard? Hardly!

First, last week the New York Times revealed that the Supriya Jindal Foundation was the beneficiary of conspicuous corporate largess, made all the more suspect by the fact that many of those same companies had matters that needed the Governor's attention.

Then, a tenacious legal fight over a study to consider the feasibility of merging the University of New Orleans with Southern University at New Orleans revealed more than a few unflattering facts about the Governor's appointing practices. It turns out that all of the Governor's appointments to the Board of Regents for Higher Education had two things in common: first, they were all maximum contributors ($5,000 per individual, not counting family members and companies); and, second, they were all white.

Jindal won that round of the legal fight, but even Republican sycophant pollster Bernie Pinsonat said he believed the Board of Regents story had the potential to prove costly to the Governor.

It's probably just a coincidence that Pinsonat's remarks were published just before 2 p.m. on Lundi Gras and within two hours Jindal's office announced the resignation from the Board of long time member and Turner Industries President and CEO Roland Toups. Jindal political guru Timmy Teepel made it clear that he and Jindal had asked Toups to resign in order to provide the Governor with the chance to name a minority member to the Board.

Turner Industries, it turns out, is charged with employment discrimination against African Americans in a lawsuit filed in Texas. According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 250 workers sued, alleging racial discrimination in hiring, pay, promotions and on-the-job treatment. Turner Industries, the paper reported, has had a number of such suits brought against it by employees and by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The question that should immediately be raised is whether this minority member will have to first contribute to Jindal's campaign in order to get the seat, or has the Jindal camp already scoured their campaign finance reports to identify potential candidates? Is green the only color Jindal can see?

The extent to which Jindal and his team are so out of touch on racial issues is made clear by the belief that appointing a single minority member to the Board of Regents will somehow correct the Governor's defective appointing patterns. That pattern shows that Jindal views African Americans as irrelevant to the governmental process at the state level.

Late last year, the Legislative Black Caucus called attention to Jindal's appointing practices in a press release that came on the heels of legislative testimony by one of Jindal's assistants. The Governor did not feel compelled to respond.

The sacking of Toups indicates that the Governor only started to consider the impact of his appointing practices when it became clear it might cost him something he wanted — specifically, the closure of the SUNO campus. The lack of a minority member on the Board with a vote appears to contradict the will of the Legislature when it passed the law creating the Board of Regents and the amendment to the Louisiana Constitution that voters approved in 1998. When Blacks complained about his pay-to-play system, he could ignore it. But, when the matter got raised in a court of law, that changed things.

Rumor has it that Jindal two conditions for people seeking appointment to the Southern University System Board of Supervisors. The first is that any appointee cannot give money to anyone running against Jindal; the second is that they cannot work against the election of any Republican legislators in their area.

The pay-to-play issue and the racial composition of the Board of Regents will not go away in the SUNO matter because the plaintiffs have announced that they intend to pursue an appeal.

The Jindal Way: Pay-to-Play

The pay-to-play model cropped up in connection with the Supriya Jindal Foundation where, the New York Times first reported, major corporations with business before the state have been making large contributions to the First Lady's foundation. Sure, they only want to help her help the kids, but there is one thing that pushes this beyond some liberal media trying to do a hit job on our nationally irrelevant governor.

The connective tissue between the Jindal Foundation and the Jindal Campaign is Alexandra Bautsch. Ms. Bautsch is listed as an officer of the Supriya Jindal Foundation (the New York Times reported her as the Treasurer). She also happens to be a fundraiser for the Jindal campaign, according to her LinkedIn page.

Ms. Bautsch apparently operated as something of a one-stop contribution window for both Jindals. Imagine the outrage (not to mention federal investigations) if Edwin Edwards and one of his wives had tried a similar arrangement!

While some of Jindal's allies have tried to downplay the significance of this story (see Pinsonat's comments in the link above), the fact is that the story solidifies the fact that Jindal operates a pay-to-play administration — exactly what he said he would end with his self-proclaimed ethics 'Gold Standard' reforms passed in the first few days of his term. As it turns out, his 'reforms' have rendered campaign finance laws virtually unenforceable.

In light of what the public has learned about Jindal in the past two weeks, the question must be asked if this wrecking of the campaign finance enforcement regime by Jindal was a deliberate act?

The Governor's pay-to-play ways are catching up with him. Bills are coming due. Too much damage is being done to public and private institutions in this state by the Governor and his policies based on nothing more than a desire to prevent his patrons from paying more taxes and a desire to turn public coffers into funnels directed into the pockets of donors-to-be through privatization.

Having set up the Board of Regents to carry out his wishes, he handed them the work of dismantling SUNO. It was overreach and it laid bare his pay-to-play approach to appointments to boards and commissions. That policy is exactly what he said he was against. It is a direct contradiction of who he said he was.

Jindal's demise as a presidential contender on the national level came after he repeatedly exposed his lack of substance to national audiences. With his ethics mantel having been shattered, the unraveling of his in-state myth has begun. Whether it unravels fast enough to enable his defeat at the polls remains to be seen. But, life is nothing if not unpredictable.

Doing the Math

Louisiana is going to lose a House seat, based on Census results. We will go from seven to six congressional districts, beginning with the 2012 federal elections.

The 2009 American Community Survey (released in December 2010) revealed that African Americans comprise almost exactly one-third of the state's population.

Louisiana is a Voting Rights state, meaning that special attention is paid to the protection of minority voting rights in our state due to our history.

So, while much talk in recent weeks has centered on ideas like creating a coastal district stretching from Texas to Mississippi, more serious consideration is going to have to be give to creating a congressional reapportionment map that responds to the fundamental demographics of our state.

One-third of six is two. Can two majority African American districts be created? Or, can one African American majority district result in five other districts with significant African American voter bases in them?

This could significantly shift the ideological makeup of our congressional delegation for the better.
White Democrats will have to learn to vote for African Americans. If we can, we can transform politics in our state. If not, we will keep on losing.

Deep Water Drilling Approved; Oil Industry Continues Whining

That whining Bobby Jindal complained about at the end of last year was apparently coming from his buddies in the oil and gas industry — not the heads of the state's colleges and universities.

The proof could be found this week when, after the Obama administration allowed 13 deep water drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico to resume, the industry cacophony of whining ratcheted up to a higher pitch.

Too little, too late. Not enough. Too slow. Too hot! Too cold! Bwaaahhh!! The industry and its apologists, accustomed to writing the rules they then chose to ignore, are perplexed by the notion of regulation and inspection by people who (at least for now) can't be bought.

Get used to it. The well has been plugged, new rules are in place, but the whining will not stop.

The legitimacy of the whining is best assessed in the context of the earlier rage against the moratorium and the dire predictions the oil and gas lobby, elected officials, academics and other said the temporary moratorium would have on Louisiana's economy.

Lies and Propaganda

The only way to describe the claims made about the moratorium and the way it was used to attack the Obama administration in Louisiana is to call them what they were: lies and propaganda.

The liar in chief was Governor Bobby Jindal who immediately recognized that the moratorium posed a financial threat to his legions of backers in the offshore oil services industry anchored primarily in coastal southeast Louisiana.

After GOP heavy hitter, former co-owner of the New Orleans Hornets, and Jindal backer Gary Chouest's companies threatened immediate layoffs after the moratorium was declared, Jindal spoke at the first anti-moratorium rally held in an Edison Chouest facility at Port Fourchon on June 11. Jindal spoke at the second anti-moratorium rally on June 24th which was held at the Gulf Island Fabricators facility in the port in Houma where that company is working on a Chouest project that is at least partially funded by the State of Louisiana.

That rally was held four days after the Jindal-ordered amicus brief filing in the suit against the moratorium in which the governor's attorneys, headed by Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, lied to the federal judge hearing the case. In the brief, Caldwell and the other attorneys said that the moratorium had cost thousands of Louisiana workers their jobs and cited the Louisiana Workforce Commission as the source of that information.

Only one problem. The claim was not true. It was not true then and was not true all through the summer when new unemployment claims in Louisiana showed no blip attributable to the moratorium. In fact, unemployment in Louisiana stayed below 2009 levels throughout the summer of 2010.

The fact-free attacks on the moratorium (and the Obama administration) reached a crescendo at the Lafayette Cajundome on July 21. On that day, the relentless campaign of economic fear waged by the industry, the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce (technically, there is a difference), and state and local government culminated in the gathering of about 12,000 to get two hours of personally delivered lies.

All of mainstream media in Lafayette bought into the so-called "Rally for Economic Survival," setting aside any pretense of objectivity and shutting down any semblance of critical thinking. There were on-air editorials by local television stations; a front-page editorial by the Gannett daily and a heavy serving of fear-dripping op-eds by opponents of the moratorium.

At the event, then-interim Lt. Governor Scott Angelle delivered the speech he'd been perfecting on smaller audiences in which he claimed President Obama didn't like the oil and gas industry. There was a blatantly misleading presentation from the Louisiana Workforce Commission on the jobs that would be affected by the moratorium. The end of the economic world was near and Lafayette would be in ruins before the summer was out if the moratorium was not lifted.

In September, the BP Gulf Gusher was plugged. In October the moratorium was lifted. The industry whining continued because drilling and/or coastal destruction was not allowed to immediately resume.

After a quick dip in the fund-raising business, Angelle returned to his prior role as Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources where he faced a decision on how to tax his old buddies (and recent contributors) in the oil and gas industry. Some saw the glaring ethical issue that Angelle and his boss the Governor chose to ignore.

New Whinery

Now, with drilling activity officially sanctioned, the industry's apologists have cranked up the whinery again.

Their lies of 2010 rob them of any credibility.

We know for a fact now that the moratorium cost very few jobs in Louisiana and in the offshore drilling industry. There were fewer than 400 claims made on the $100 million fund set up to help compensate those who lost their jobs or income due to the moratorium. We know that the moratorium was never cited as the cause of any spike in job losses in 2010 in the Louisiana Workforce Commission's official reports (which is separate from the propaganda work they did at the behest of the Governor and the industry).

The best evidence of the lack of the impact of the moratorium on the economy, though, came in Lafayette. In December, City/Parish President Joey Durel (a speaker at the anti-moratorium rally in July) got the Lafayette Consolidated Government Council to approve a pay raise for Lafayette Parish governmental workers. Durel cited increased sales tax collections in Lafayette Parish as providing the fiscal underpinning for the raises.

If the moratorium had any economic impact, it was indirect. The direct impact was from the fear campaign waged by opponents of the moratorium who succeeded for a time in convincing people that the 2010 moratorium would send the region's economy into a tailspin that would rival the oil and gas industry collapse of the mid-1980s.

None of that happened.

The people who inflicted this hoax on Louisiana know it. The people know it. The perpetrators of the hoax must not be allowed to go unpunished for their deception.

If Jindal’s Got the Job He Wants, Why Is He Still Fighting Health Care Reform?

Governor Bobby Jindal insists that he is not running for president, that he has the only job he wants — that of being governor of Louisiana.

There is a simple way that the governor could prove that: he could order Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to withdraw Louisiana from the suit challenging the new health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act.

Why? Because the Affordable Care Act is good for what ails Louisiana.

Admitting that might not help Jindal’s standing among national Republicans, but there is no better way to prove his commitment to serving Louisiana than dropping a politicized legal challenge to a law that helps Louisiana families and businesses, the health care provider community, and the State of Louisiana. In fact, under Jindal, state government has moved to take advantage of provisions of the new law.

To understand why this law is good for Louisiana, it is necessary to understand the state of health in Louisiana today. Doing so reveals that the Affordable Care Act goes a long way towards addressing what ails health care in this state (and, also, this country).

The Affordable Care Act addresses key things that ail Louisiana and Louisiana’s health care delivery system. It will not only improve access to care in Louisiana, it will stabilize the finances of the provider community and ensure that the state’s health care dollars (spent primarily through Medicaid) get more bang for the buck.

For Democrats, recognizing the state of health care in Louisiana and understanding how the Act responds to what ails it, reveals the blatantly partisan nature of the attacks on the law by Jindal and others. The sound public policy at the heart of the act reveals the efforts to deny Louisiana citizens, businesses and the provider community the benefits of this Act to be strictly partisan and diametrically opposite of the best interests of the state and its people.

Understanding Louisiana’s health care challenges and how the Act responds to those reveals the opponents of the Act for what they are — partisans who place politics above any consideration for the well being of the people of this state.

Jindal's Budget Cuts to Kill More Jobs than Drilling Moratorium

All summer long, Louisiana residents were subjected to non-stop lying and yammering by Governor Bobby Jindal and his allies about the potential threat to Louisiana jobs posed by the deep water drilling moratorium. Although the job losses never materialized, the mere thought of them had Jindal & Co. speaking in apocalyptic terms about Louisiana's economic future in the wake of the temporary drilling shutdown.

In contrast to his previous agitation regarding the possibility of job losses, the Governor seems eerily serene as he prepares to unleash new rounds of state budget cuts that will cut services and cost jobs in both the public and private sector.

In a note to supporters last week, Jindal reiterated his opposition to any form of tax increases. He also took credit for all good news in the state and laid blame for any bad news at the feet of others. That's just the way he rolls.

But a funny thing happened while Jindal was on an out-of-state jaunt: some inconvenient facts escaped into public view.

Turns out that the Governor's plan to close Earl K. Long Medical Center in Baton Rouge will cost about 400 people their jobs. That fact came via testimony from the hospital's CEO before the Louisiana Senate Finance Committee. That number is significant on a couple of scores.

First, according to the LSU Health System's 2008 annual report (PDF — the most recent one available), there were 1,266 full-time employees at the hospital. So, about one-third of the people working at the hospital will lose their job as a result of the shut down. Ostensibly the hospital is being closed to save money, but LSU VP for the Health System, Dr. Fred Cerise has pointed out that the shift of services to private hospitals will actually drive up the cost of Medicaid services in the Baton Rouge area due to higher reimbursement rates the hospitals are being promised by the state to take the increased patient loads resulting from the closure.

The other reason that the job loss number is significant is that it is larger than the actual number of jobs affected by the deep water drilling moratorium. The Baton Rouge Area Foundation was selected to administer a $100 million fund created to help those who lost their jobs as a result of the moratorium.

Fewer that 400 workers applied for the funds.

So, this single example of Jindal's focus on dismantling public institutions will have a larger negative impact on jobs than the moratorium he so passionately excoriated, yet his allies have not rented any large arenas to rally the populace against the extermination of these jobs.

More Job Losses Are Coming

House Speaker Jim Tucker and Jindal don't agree on much these days, but they do still appear to share a desire to dismantle much (if not all) of the state's public hospital system now run by LSU. Three hospitals are run out of the Shreveport Health Sciences Center in Shreveport (Shreveport, Huey P. Long in Pineville, and E.A. Conway in Monroe). The rest of the system is run by the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. The hospitals run there Earl K. Long in Baton Rouge, Bogalusa Medical Center, Leonard Chabert Medical Center in Houma, University Medical Center in Lafayette, Walter O. Moss Regional Medical Center in Lake Charles, the Interim Public Hospital in New Orleans, and Lallie Kemp Regional Medical Center in Independence.

The two systems employ about 13,000 doctors, nurses, aides, orderlies, and staff.

In the minds of Jindal and his Republican legislative allies, just about all of those hospitals and most of those jobs are on the cutting table.

Coming on the heels of the most recent session where Jindal successfully pushed for the privatization of three state mental health hospitals, the people running these hospitals feel threatened, particularly those at the smaller hospitals.

Last Friday, State Rep. John Bel Edwards, Sen. Ben Nevers, and Tangipahoa Parish President Gordon Burgess took part in a meeting at the hospital about the facility's future. The hospital handled more than 100,000 cases last year. Beyond the essential healthcare services it provides to its patients, 39 percent of which did not have health insurance last year, Lallie Kemp (like the other hospitals in the LSU system) is an economic engine in that region.

According to Rep. Edwards, Lallie Kemp has a $90 million annual economic impact on Independence and the surrounding area in the Florida Parishes. In the 2008 annual LSU annual report, the hospital was listed as having 400 full-time employees or their equivalent.

Although Rep. Edwards said he knows of no current plan to close or cut back services at the hospital, he said that the planning for a 35 percent cut in state funding Jindal has ordered all departments to plan for could change that dramatically.

The loss in access to care would be devastating to the people in that region. But those losses could pale in comparison to the economic impact on communities closing of Lallie Kemp or any of the other public hospitals in the LSU systems would have.

Still, Jindal insists that no taxes will be raised and that the state will make do with the revenue base it currently has.

The Medicaid Rebellion

Jindal's initial DHH Secretary Alan Levine confected a plan to bring private insurance companies into manage the Medicaid program and to reduce funding for the program but claim that the quality of care would not diminish. Brazenly branded "Making Medicaid Better" the plan has met with fierce opposition from the provider community (doctors, hospitals, ambulance providers, etc.).

Why would providers object to cutting funding for care to the poor? Because Medicaid (like Medicare) works by paying providers to deliver care. That is, the money for these 'public' health programs goes directly to private providers (some also goes to public providers like the LSU hospitals).

Shrinking funding while extending new hands in the till to manage the care delivered will result in reduced funding for providers. You can do the math. Reduced funding for providers results in fewer providers willing to deliver the services which, in turn,  results in reduced access to care.

The Medicaid program in Louisiana is huge; in excess of $7 billion flows through the program annually, but the vast majority of the money is federal money as Louisiana has one of the most generous federal match ratios in the country due to the fact that we are a poor state and have had strong champions for the program in the Senate.

The Louisiana Hospital Association, fighting proposed budget cuts in 2009, said a $200 million cut in Medicaid funding would cost Louisiana nearly 2,000 healthcare jobs. Although those cuts were staved off at the time, succeeding budget shortfalls have resulted in far more money being cut from Medicaid since that time.

With Jindal's refusal to consider new funding sources and a budget shortfall approaching $2 billion anticipated at the start of the next fiscal year (and with Jindal still not having made good on his pledge to revised the State Constitution to ensure that not all cuts come solely from healthcare and higher education), new cuts in Medicaid are going to result in significant job losses in both the public and private segments of the healthcare delivery system.

Higher Education Remains Targeted

Higher education is the other segment of the state's budgets that are not constitutionally protected. Jindal has been taking heat publicly for his cuts in this area, owing in no small measure for the affection many alums feel for their old schools.

While large segments of our state like to sneer at the 'pointy heads' in academia, higher education has significant economic impact on the communities fortunate enough to have such institutions in their midst. As a native of Eunice, I can tell you that I shudder to think what that city would be like economically today were it not for the presence of the LSU-E campus there.

The University of Louisiana System put together an economic impact fact sheet (PDF) a couple of years ago when Jindal first locked in on his 'no new taxes for any reason' strategy of pursuing his national ambitions.

The economic impact of LSU on the Baton Rouge area is immense and its impact on the entire state through the AgCenter, the LSU Hospital System, and other initiatives is at least as large as the UL system's.

Jindal maintains that the universities are not delivering enough value, that people take too long to graduate, if they do at all. It might do the Governor some good to actually talk to the people who are working their way through college. He would learn about the kind of balancing act they have to do among work, family and school. He might also take a whack at explaining how increasing tuition is going to make those students move through the system faster.

But, as a man with no ties to any higher educational institution in the state, it's all just about numbers to him.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

This summer, Jindal was all about jobs — when he wasn't killing oysters or generally making a nuisance of himself (see page 20) during the BP Gulf Gusher. But the jobs he was worried about were the oilfield service jobs of people employed by his biggest political backers — the Bollingers and the Chouests. His concern, one could convincingly argue, was not about the jobs at all, but about the threat Jindal believed the moratorium posed to his benefactors.

Despite the fact that he is the child of public employees, Jindal exhibits a peculiar disdain for their work and their well being. No doubt his judgment on the worth of these workers and services is clouded by his national Republican ambitions which makes tax increases an anathema, a fact that has been compounded by the rise of the Tea Party wing within the Republican Party.

The complicating factor for Jindal is that 2011 is a statewide election year and his national ambitions cannot be advanced if he cannot get re-elected here.

Democrats are not well positioned now, but neither was the national party in 1991 before Bill Clinton challenged George H.W. Bush (or, 'Bush the Intelligent' compared to his son).

People who value higher education are going to have to step up. Dave Treen is dead and it's doubtful whether another intervention at the Mansion can prevent the new author from pushing ahead with his plans to slash programs.

Jindal was elected, in part, by people who believed that he was a problem solver who understood the value of education and knew how to manage healthcare. He's proven that he is none of the above.

The forces of opposition to his policies are firming. It remains to be seen if someone can step forward and give voice to that opposition in a way that either forces Jindal to change his path — or costs him re-election.

Strange things have a way of happening on the way to coronations in a democracy.

Melancon's Loss Shows Democrats Need to Offer a Choice, Not an Echo

Louisiana Democrats pondering the drubbing we've been taking in federal elections lately (with a few prominent exceptions) should read conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly's 1964 book "A Choice, Not an Echo."

In that book, written as an endorsement of Barry Goldwater's bid to win the Republican nomination for the presidency that year, Schlafly called on her party to return to its conservative roots and declared that the party would find electoral success would only come if it embraced a separate identity from Democrats. Republicans, she said, needed to stop being the 'me, too' party.

Charlie Melancon's crushing defeat on November 2 should send a clear message to Louisiana Democrats. The message is not, as Republican mouthpieces would have us believe, 'drop dead.' It is not that the party and our candidates have no future in Louisiana politics.

The message is that Democrats will not win elections again in Louisiana unless and until our candidates stop runing as though we are the "me, too" party of Louisiana, The road to electoral success for Louisiana Democrats will open up when Louisiana Democrats stop trying to sell ourselves as Republican Lite.

The message from last week's election was clear. Republicans know who their candidates are and they are not going to settle for anything less than the 'real thing' — even when that 'real thing' has a personal history that flies in the face of much of what that party once stood for as David Vitter's personal history and the way he's managed his Senate office do. Republicans know they want that real thing. Only some Democrats (and their consultants) think Republicans are willing to accept imitations.

Charlie Melancon is a good man. He is, in fact, many of the things David Vitter once claimed to be — particularly the part about being a devoted family man. But, Charlie  who ran as a Democrat, did everything he could to distance himself from his party and its core constituents of African-Americans and activists who have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness — make that an eagerness — to work on behalf of Democratic candidates who will at least make a modicum of effort to align themselves with the party.

That record speaks for itself in presidential election years where, since 1996, no national Democratic ticket has spent significant money in Louisiana after the nominating convention and yet those activists somehow manage to produce vote totals of 40% and upward. Melancon got 38% of the vote against Vitter. He lost core Democratic voters by running against the party and away from its activist base.

Charlie's campaign never reached out to the party's base in any meaningful way. In fact, his campaign insisted on running away from his president, his party and our signature issue of health care reform via the Affordable Care Act. Those actions were at the core of his defeat. Anyone who paid any attention to the campaign knows that Vitter's campaign focused on tying Melancon to the very things he sought to distance himself from, all of which were things that made Charlie look like a Democrat.

It Started With The Affordable Care Act

Charlie's problems started with healthcare reform, which President Obama signed into law in March of this year as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Melancon wanted nothing to do with it. He stayed away from it as much as possible. He avoided opportunities to speak in support of the issue in 2009, when they bill was being shaped and the opposition to the bill in the form of the Tea Party shouting matches erupted.

There was an opportunity then for leadership in helping define the issue. Senator Mary Landrieu did some work on that then, taking part in a televised forum on healthcare reform organized by the Lafayette Parish Democratic Executive Committee that ran in three markets (Shreveport, Lafayette and Lake Charles). Melancon was invited to participate. He refused.

Senator Landrieu made clear that she opposed the public option that was then still part of the discussion, but spoke in support of other aspects of the legislation such as health insurance exchanges, expansion of Medicaid, and tax credits for small businesses.

Charlie's refusal to engage on the issue was apparent to friends and foes alike. His silence cost him dearly in credibility but the vacuum his silence left was filled by the anti-reform rhetoric of the Tea Partiers that not only distorted the debate, but their disinformation helped radicalize voters and made the streets safe for David Vitter to appear in public — even as troubles related to the management of his Senate office appeared to re-enforce his problems with women.

Once the grandstanding ends and more provisions of the ACA kick in, Louisiana families and businesses (as well as the healthcare provider community) are going to find that there is a lot to like in this law. As this happens, Democrats should be pointing to those positives and reminding people who was feeding the distortions.

The Moratorium Hoax

Like most public officials in Louisiana, Charlie and his campaign tried to find a way to take the Republican position on the deep water drilling moratorium. That the claims about the economic impact of the moratorium were a hoax never crossed his mind. He was intent on trying to win over the oilfield service industry that had at one time supported his runs for Congress. It was never going to happen.

Opposition to the moratorium was immediately political because it threatened the pockets of stalwart Republican financial backers, primarily Donal Bollinger and Gary Chouest and their families and networks of limited liability corporations.

To anyone without direct financial ties to the offshore oil industry, the moratorium (issued a month after the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout occurred and while thousands of barrels of oil were gushing uncontrolled into the Gulf of Mexico) not only made sense, it was the prudent thing to do during what was predicted to be an active hurricane season.

Instead of showing some leadership and defining the issue, Charlie again opted to pursue the GOP Lite position of passing a resolution calling for the end of the moratorium. It did not work as oil service money flowed into Vitter's coffers almost as freely as BP's oil gushed into the Gulf.

Again, Melancon's intended audience was not falling for the 'lite' take on the issue and he missed an opportunity to display leadership and give Democrats a reason to rally to his banner.

Adding insult to injury, Melancon's campaign then trumpeted his opposition to President Obama on both healthcare and the moratorium in television spots in the campaign's final weeks.

Historical Perspective

As a rule, Democrats are not going to have more money than Republicans in campaigns. When we win races, though, it is through organization, mobilization and focus. All campaigns rely to some extent on volunteers, but Democratic candidates need them more to help offset the financial edge that Republicans tend to have (it is not always the case, as when an incumbent Democrat seeks re-election as Mary Landrieu did in 2008).

But volunteers have to be motivated. They have to be given reasons to believe that the donation of their time and effort is worthwhile. The prospect of victory can be one of those things, but clearly the record of volunteerism in the presidential campaigns demonstrates that is not the prime motivation.

The prime motivation is that the candidate that these volunteers work for reflects their values and will stand up for those values on the campaign trail and fight for them once elected.

Democratic candidates who position themselves as Republican Lite candidates automatically put up a wall between that volunteer base and their campaigns. It is like restricting the oxygen supply to an athlete or to an engine. It will ultimately diminish performance. This is particularly true when a Democrat is challenging an incumbent Republican.

Volunteers make those commitments because they feel (and want to feel) that they can make a difference. They bring a passion and energy to campaigns that cannot be otherwise obtained.

Democrats who cut themselves off from this volunteer base do so at their own peril.

Yes, President Obama is not popular in Louisiana. But, trying to distance himself from the president and his party did not help Charlie Melancon. It did, though, cut him off from the people who might have made a difference in his campaign.

Could they have won it for him, probably not considering the elements in this election cycle. But, in a low turnout campaign (only 43.1% of Louisiana voters bothered to go to the polls last week), an enthusiastic base could have boosted turnout and might have made for at least a more respectable showing. Go to the Secretary of State's Election Results page and use the graphical election results option to get turnout percentages across the state.

Conservative Republicans took Phyllis Schafly's advice to heart in 1964 and began building a conservative movement within their party that produced Ronald Reagan and the conservatism that has ruled that party in recent decades. She said Republicans could succeed only if they offered voters "A Choice, Not an Echo."

Louisiana Democrats can resume winning state elections if we take that message to heart and embrace our party's base and philosophy. The Republicans have their candidates.

With statewide elections looming next year and the Jindal administration promising to continue relentless cuts to healthcare and higher education, Louisiana Democrats need to start looking for candidates who are truly ours.

Voters might actually embrace a choice that would take us off of the current path to disaster.